Haven: Perditus Review

Has Haven been turned on its head? Well, did last week’s episode turn Haven on its head more than the fog wall, everyone in town getting Troubles, and Duke’s multinational adventure? Probably not. The good news is that this week’s episode might have an even more ridiculous Trouble but it’s starting us on the path to the series finale.

So after last week’s Trouble involved a tarot card reader’s readings coming true, this week had a medium who talked to the dead by bringing them back to life.

Last week’s episode worked because it aired on October 29th so it was a part of Syfy’s 31 days of Halloween. This episode aired on November 5th and it was a zombie episode. Yes, the eventual kicker for this episode was that when the dead remembered that they were supposed to be dead, they turned into zombies and ate their loved ones. That included our medium who holed up in the Haven police station which resulted in your clichéd slow zombie slowly beat their way through doors and windows.

I know that Haven isn’t free from resorting to clichéd writing or resolutions but this was a little too much for me. The monkey’s paw payoff to raising the dead could have stood on its own as a consequence without the zombie movie moment. Even the people becoming zombies would have been fine if there was a parody of the genre. You can still send up the genre without being an overt comedy. While Haven hasn’t had a problem with comedy episodes, it wouldn’t have necessarily fit with the rest of the episode, especially given that the crux of the story was supposed to be Audrey and Dwight’s grief.

I think that the resurrection of Charlotte was a miss, though. Our characters spent the entire time worrying about building the barn and trying to figure out who killed Charlotte which muddles the emotional hook of Audrey losing her mother, Dwight losing his lover and neither really getting a proper goodbye. The first half of the episode works reasonably well with a dead Charlotte and an apoplectic Dwight. The zombies would have worked for any Syfy 31 Days of Halloween™ filler episode but just does not build off Wild Card’s ending at all.

Before we dig up Charlotte, we spend some quality time with the Teagues boys. Because Dave can see what the Croatoan sees, Dwight and Audrey force him into having a vision of what it did to Charlotte. To do so, they liquor him up and he stays on the sauce for the duration of the episode. Welcome to Haven, Mr. Lahey.

Well, the Croatoan spoke to Dave in his vision apparently knowing that he would be watching. If memory serves, the Croatoan didn’t sound the same here as it did last week but that’s a minor issue compared to what crops up later.

So the Brothers Teagues head off to find Charlotte’s missing travel case with the aether using Seth’s old rougarou device. They find it at the Haven Herald office which is when Dwight, Audrey and Nathan burst in to say that Charlotte said that Dave killed her.

And that just leads to a plethora of continuity issues that probably won’t get sorted out in the next episode. I pointed out in the last review that the Croatoan went from being the No Marks Killer to being stabby. We’ve seen Dave’s visions of the Croatoan killing people as the No Marks Killer. Now, Dave has a similar vision of himself killing Charlotte.

There are two possibilities explaining this. The first is that the Croatoan possessed Dave to kill Charlotte so he wouldn’t reveal himself before he wanted to. Of course, that doesn’t explain why he didn’t wipe Charlotte’s memory. The alternative is that Dave has been the No Marks Killer the whole time but got inexplicably stabby this once. He also is very selective about wiping people’s memories because he doesn’t do it all the time. In either instance, how didn’t Vince notice Dave going missing to do some killing?

And in North Carolina, apparently not-so-dead or possibly non-existent Walter gave Duke a vision of Haven’s future in which the town has been destroyed by the Croatoan. Everyone is dead except for Vince and Vickie because Nathan decided to jump into the void which resulted in a localized apocalypse event.

We also learn that the Roanoake colony wasn’t wiped out by the Croatoan but the first Crocker working for the Croatoan. So I guess this means that the Crockers have been inadvertently empowering the Croatoan for hundreds of years by feeding it Troubles via their Trouble. I think. I didn’t really understand what that was all about. It’s supposed to be a big revelation but everyone got over it really sunk in as being important.

For some reason, Duke decides all of this means that he has to leave Seth behind and go back to Haven alone. Well, I can understand why he’s going to Haven because he knows what will lead to Haven’s destruction. But he abandons Seth because? I can’t really come up with an answer that works inside the story. The best I can do is that Bill Shatner broke the budget so they had no more money to keep Kris Lemche.

Overall, this episode feels like the pivot point for the season (well, 5B, anyway). Charlotte’s death is rather inconsequential when we have revelations that the Croatoan is here, Dave is somehow tied to the Croatoan through his visions and actions and Duke is the only one who knows what event dooms Haven. Sure, we’re still waiting on the actual reveal of the Croatoan but we know that we’re on the home stretch at this point.

As with many Haven episodes, this one feels underwhelming when you start picking apart individual elements. The extra Charlotte goodbye was needed for Dwight but it should have been his in the last episode. The whole thing with Dave and the Croatoan is a bit nonsensical but I’m hoping there is a payoff coming.

Other random points of note:

I think I’ve said it before but it’s probably worth saying again that Edge and especially Jayne Eastwood are the best actors on the show at this point. Not that any actors are dragging the show down but they’re the ones you can generally count on to knock it out of the park.

I told you that it was John Dunsworth’s voice as the killer in the last episode. They couldn’t have gotten one of the crew guys to do that voice to preserve the mystery for a week?

Dave is the alcohol.

Next time on Haven, we go back in time. What is it with Haven and alternate realities and time travel? Like the last time travel episode in Season 3, Nathan is once again going back in time. This time, he’s got Vince in tow and hopefully won’t be fathering his son who is older than he is. That and we’re dealing with the fallout about Dave. Hopefully, there will be answers but I don’t think that will happen until after we meet the Croatoan.

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About Steve Murray

Steve is the founder and editor of The Lowdown Blog and et geekera. On The Lowdown Blog, he often writes about motorsports, hockey, politics and pop culture. Over on et geekera, Steve writes about geek interests and lifestyle.
Steve is on Twitter at @TheSteveMurray.